Amira Hass (Hebrew: עמירה הס‎‎; born 28 June 1956) is an Israelijournalist and author, mostly known for her columns in the daily newspaper Haaretz. She is particularly recognized for her reporting on Palestinian affairs in the West Bank and Gaza, where she has also lived for a number of years.

For some years during the 1980s, Hass lived in Amsterdam, being married to a Dutch man. She became fluent in Dutch and was involved with various left-wing, feminist and Jewish dissident groups. However, her marriage broke down and she returned to Israel.[citation needed]

Until 1989, Hass wrote occasionally for low-circulation left-wing magazines, but was not known to the general public. Her journalistic career was launched that year due to the Romanian Revolution. Haaretz looked urgently for a reporter to go to Romania and cover the unfolding events. Amira Hass had a cultural Romanian background and some knowledge of the language, and was willing to take the assignment at very short notice. Her series of in-depth reports from Romania got wide attention and gained her a job as a regular staff editor for Haaretz.[citation needed]

Frustrated by the events of the First Intifada and by what she considered their inadequate coverage in the Israeli media, she started to report from the Palestinian territories in 1991. As of 2003, she is the only Jewish Israeli journalist who has lived full-time among the Palestinians, in Gaza from 1993 and in Ramallah from 1997.[4] On various occasions she stated her opinion, "Just as reporting about England should be from London and about France from Paris, so reporting about Palestine should be from Palestine."[citation needed]

Her reporting is generally sympathetic to the Palestinian point of view and critical of Israeli government policy towards the Palestinians. During the years of the Al-Aqsa Intifada, however, Hass published several highly critical articles about the chaos and disorder caused by militias associated with the Fatah party of Yasser Arafat and the bloody war between Palestinian factions in Nablus.[citation needed]

Her reportage of events, and her voicing of opinions that run counter to both official Israeli and Palestinian positions has exposed Hass to verbal attacks, and opposition from both the Israeli and Palestinian authorities.[citation needed] In 2006, she compared Israeli policies towards the Palestinian population to those of South Africa during Apartheid, saying, "The Palestinians, as a people, are divided into subgroups, something which is reminiscent also of South Africa under apartheid rule."[5]

In September 2014, Hass went to attend a conference in Birzeit University organised by the leftist German Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and the Center for Development Studies at the university.[6] However, she was asked to leave by two Birzeit lecturers, on account of a rule against the presence of Israelis (which she judged to mean Israeli Jews).[7] She said that she had attended the University many times and had never heard of such a rule.[7] The international conference's organizers were offended. The regional head of the Rosa Luxembourg Foundation Katja Hermann stated after the incident that she would not have agreed to hold the conference at Birzeit had she been aware of the policy.[7] The university later issued a statement saying "The administration has nothing against the presence of the journalist Hass."[7]

Hass self identifies as a leftist.[7] In 2011 she joined the Freedom Flotilla II to Gaza.[8] In a speech in Vancouver, when asked whether there is any future hope for the region, Hass answered "Only if we continue to build a bi-national movement against Israeli apartheid."[9]

In April 2013, Hass wrote an article in Haaretz defending Palestinian stone-throwing, calling it "the birthright and duty of anyone subject to foreign rule".[10] She was criticized by left-wing politician Yossi Beilin[11] and Adva Biton,[12][13] whose three-year-old daughter was critically injured during a Palestinian rock attack.[14] The Yesha Council filed a complaint with Attorney General Yehuda Weinstein and the police, accusing Hass of incitement to violence and pointing out that stone throwing has caused serious injuries and death among Israelis.[15]

In June 2001, Judge Rachel Shalev-Gartel of the Jerusalem Magistrate's Court ruled that Hass had defamed the Jewish settler community of Beit Hadassah in Hebron and ordered her to pay 250,000 shekels (about $60,000) in damages. Hass had published accounts by Palestinians that claimed Israeli settlers defiled the body of a Palestinian militant killed by Israeli police; the settlers said that the event did not take place and that Hass had falsely reported the story with malicious intent.[16] The presiding judge found in favour of the settlers, saying that television accounts contradicted Hass's account and ruling that Hass's report damaged that community’s reputation. Haaretz indicated that it did not have time to arrange a defense in the case and indicated that it would appeal the decision.[16] Hass said that she had brought forward sourced information from the Palestinian community and said that it was the responsibility of newspaper editors to cross-reference it with other information from the IDF and the settler community.[17]

On 1 December 2008, Hass, who had traveled to Gaza aboard a protest vessel, had to flee the strip due to threats to her life after she criticized Hamas.[18] She was arrested by Israeli police on her return to Israel for being in Gaza without a permit.[19]

After residing in the Gaza Strip for several months, Hass was again arrested by Israeli police upon her return to Israel on 12 May 2009 "for violating a law which forbids residence in an enemy state".[20]

In December 2009 Hass was awarded the Reporters Without Borders Prize for Press Freedom "for her independent and outspoken reporting from the Gaza Strip for the Israeli daily Ha'aretz during Operation Cast Lead, the offensive which Israel waged against the territory from 27 December 2008 to 18 January 2009".[25]